In the press office: how can councils make the local government message stand out above celebrity gossip and the X Factor? Photograph: Ken Mckay/Ken McKay/Rex Features

If you're reading this, the chances are you take a keen interest in local government. But let's face facts: it is something of a niche topic. Not everyone is interested in housing scrutiny or changes to planning rules. Recycling collection rates aren't talked about in pubs.

Personally, I fail to understand why events at town hall aren't front page news every day. As Kelly Quigley-Hicks of South Cambridgeshire district council recently pointed out: "Councils are dealing with a range of services, specialists and communities. Politics – local and national – is fascinating." But the fact remains that reality TV stars, celebrity tittle tattle and misbehaving footballers get far more column inches than council decisions about the real issues that affect people.

So, local authority press officers are left with two choices. We can accept our place in the grand scheme of things and continue churning out press releases, keeping fingers crossed that they are used and more importantly that our messages aren't distorted. Or we look for ways to cut out the middleman and get our messages directly to our target audience. As digital pioneer Nick Booth (@podnosh on Twitter) told me when I was researching new ways for Birmingham city council to communicate with residents: "It's your story – tell it."

Nick's advice was spot-on, and it helped shape our plans when we launched Birminghamnewsroom.com in June 2009. We haven't looked back since.

Our online newsroom still carries those press releases – we haven't killed them off just yet – but also features videos, downloadable photographs on Flickr, maps, speeches and links to all council meetings, reports and agendas. We stream live video from full council meetings, carry answers to frequently asked Freedom of Information requests and, when necessary, can instantly rebut misleading or inaccurate reports.

In short, the website has become a hard working and valuable member of the press office team.

What we've found is that the day to day stuff of local government does matter to the people of Birmingham and there is a growing appetite for news and views from the council. The newsroom attracts at least 30,000 unique users a month, with an average 300,000 page views.

Just five years ago none of this would have been possible, but the growth of social media and the availability of open source platforms (we use wordpress) has opened up exciting new routes for communication.

The newsroom has not replaced traditional communications in Birmingham; it has supplemented what we already did. We should not get carried away by thinking social media is a "golden bullet" solution. But we now reach traditional journalists, bloggers and residents.

With more than 5,000 followers on Twitter there is an open channel for conversation with residents and, as is the case across the UK, people respond positively when the local council is happy to engage online.

It may sound a little grand but our intention has always been to open up local democracy, so we link to reports, meeting agendas and minutes. A daily tweet points to scheduled meetings, giving readers links to more detailed information.

We want people to take more of an interest in how their city is run and the results have been extremely positive. We've had over 3,000 views of video footage from the last two full council meetings and next month we will stream our first scrutiny meeting in a trial that will hopefully extend to other committees at a later date.

I'm proud of the way we've continued to develop the newsroom. It's far from perfect and it certainly wouldn't win any online beauty contests, but does reflect a very sincere desire to reach a wider audience, opening up our day to day business. Local government news may still be a niche topic but it's a growing niche.

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